Recently, commercial, as well as residential, lighting applications have been transitioning to the use of LEDs where arrays of LED modules provide illumination in applications such as street lighting, office building lighting, and many other outdoor and indoor applications.
LEDs perform well in the industry, but there are often problems with aiming of the light output from LEDs in a desired direction and pattern. In general, LEDs emit light in all directions away from the circuit board thereof. Consequently, a good portion of light emitted by an LED can be wasted because it is not directed towards a desired area of illumination. Conventionally, such side-emitters and asymmetrical distribution LEDs are controlled with lenses and prisms. Such control optics tend to decrease the amount of lumens (or candlepower) produced by any given fixture utilizing LEDs because of the loss of lumens through the lens or prism material. Other conventional means for directing light emitted by LEDs include use of reflective surfaces which, while avoiding light losses suffered by lenses and prisms, may be more difficult to configure to achieve the desired illumination direction or patterns.
Another known design consideration associated with the use of LEDs in lighting fixtures is heat dissipation. Accordingly, LED modules for use in LED arrays often incorporate heat sinks to facilitate dissipation of heat generated by the LEDs during operation.
Conventional configurations that attempt to address the above-noted considerations in LED and other lighting applications are described in, for example, U.S. Design Pat. Nos. D576,331, D576,330 and D568,521, U.S. Patent Applications Publication Nos. 2008/0080196, 2007/0076414, 2008/0078524, 2008/0212329 and 2008/0080162, and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,580,156, 6,942,361, 6,234,648, 5,947,587, 3,562,513, 4,337,507, 6,676,279, 7,252,408, 7,347,706, the entire disclosures of all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
While the conventional configurations described in the above disclosures provide different means to address various considerations associated with utilization of LEDs, a need still exists for a luminaire that can be readily and efficiently configured to utilize LEDs and direct light emitted from the LEDs at a desired angle and in a desired pattern.